Norfolk Gazette And Publick Ledger

From a London Paper:
From the papers laid before Parliament concerning the Expedition to Walcheren.

MIDDLEBURGH, Sept. 11, 1809.

SIR,—The communication I have been honoured with from lieutenant-general the earl of Chatham, is of so important a nature, that I must beg leave to trouble his lordship with more detailed observations on the subject, than I should presume to do on any ordinary occasion.

Independent of the existing records of the unhealthiness of Zealand, every object around us depicts it in the most formidable manner; the bottom of every canal that has communication with the sea is thickly covered with an ooze, which, when the tide is out, emits a most offensive and noisome effluvia; every ditch is filled with water which is loaded with animal and vegetable substances in a state of putrefaction; and the whole island is so flat, and so near the level of the sea, that a large proportion of it is little better than a swamp, and there is scarcely a place where water of a tolerably good quality can be procured.

The effect of all these causes of disease is strongly marked in the appearance of the inhabitants, the greater part of whom are pale and listless. Scrofula is a very general complaint amongst them. The children are sickly, and many of the grown persons are deformed.

The endemic diseases of this country, remittent and intermittent fevers, begin to appear about the middle of August, and continue to prevail until the commencement of frosty weather checks the exhalations from the earth, gives tone to the debilitated frames of the people, and stops the further progress of the complaints. It is computed that nearly a third of the inhabitants are attacked with fever every sickly season.

If individuals who have lived in this island from their infancy observe a degree of cleanliness that can scarcely be surpassed, even who live in spacious apartments, cannot obviate the effects of the climate; it may naturally be concluded what a foreign army must suffer by being exposed, in the first instance, to the inclemency of the weather, and afterwards crowded in barracks where, under the most favourable circumstances, the men must have suffered but being crowded as they are, it must have produced and germinated the extended disease a fact: The health which the troops enjoyed during the operations was but a proof (as I have already had the honour to state to his lordship) that the powers of body and mind, when their energies are called into action, resist for a time the causes of disease. The fever which now unhappily prevails in the army, first appeared among the battalions which were cantoned in South Beveland, and only began to demonstrate its influence here about the time that Flushing surrendered to his majesty's arms.

The rapidity with which the disease has extended itself during the short period that has elapsed since that event is almost unexampled in the history of any military operations. As the season has hitherto been a favourable one, (for hot and dry weather produces the most destructive diseases) the cases have been slight, but a very considerable number of them have notwithstanding assumed a more serious form, and have degenerated into that species of low fever which often prevails in jails and other ill ventilated places in England.

A melancholy proof of this is found in the loss of valuable lives that has already been noticed, and which I am concerned to state is not diminishing. Seventeen men died in the regimental hospitals of this garrison alone during the last twenty-four hours.

As the progress of the mischief in the short period of three weeks is much greater than could rationally have been calculated upon, and as scarcely a third part of the sickly season has elapsed, it is hardly possible to conjecture what loss may be incurred during the continuance of it. The causes which operate on the human frame are so powerfully and so generally applied, that all the precaution and preventive which art can invent, though they may diminish, can never obviate their effects in any degree; it must therefore be an inevitable consequence of the British troops remaining in Walcheren, that a very considerable loss must be sustained.

Although I have trespassed so much on his lordship's time, I beg leave to add one remark. that I humbly conceive of consequence, which is, that those men who may be attacked with fever, and recover from it, will have their constitutions so affected by the shock, that their physical powers when called into action hereafter, will be very materially diminished.

I have, &c.
(Signed) JOHN WEBB
Inspector of Hospitals.
Lieut. Col. Cary, Military Secretary, &c. &c.